I'd had a little soreness in my back for the last two days but it felt good when I got up at 5am so I decided to go to the training ride.

About a kilometre from home as I went to turn right into a side street a guy decided to come out of the side street not expecting a cyclist to be turning. He was cutting across in front of me and all I could do was swerve to the left and hope he saw me. He did and I couldn't get around him so I had to do a complete circle around to the left and go around the back of him.

I got to the meeting point still in one piece and off we went. Only 500m and we got split in two by a red light. Sadly I was in the back group and these higher grade riders don't take prisoners. The group who got through took off and the lead guys in our pack wanted to chase them down so there was no warm up today, it was straight into 43 km/h and myself and another guy were dropped within 3km.

We rode together chatting and took a bigger than normal short cut and headed towards the pack and where we met them there was a median strip so we had to got up the road then turn. We were chasing again. The council up here waste so much water it's not funny. I reckon 25% of the road along the tourist area was covered in water from the council over watering the plants and median strips. Total pain in the arse riding through it especially behind another rider. We caught up to another straggler and eventually caught them on their way back from the casin0 loop. All went fine for the next 10 kilometres but it was hard because we kept getting red lights and these guys see a green and take off like scared rabbits and us lower graders suffer getting up to their speed.

Anyway, they dropped me at about the 18-20 km mark and I was catching a group of stragglers but then I copped the worse run of red lights since red lights were invented. I went from 50m behind to rounding a corner and not seeing them down a 1km straight and that was in the space of about 2km.

I'd had enough and I judged where I'd have to turn to get home at 30km ridden and was cruising in the low 30's when I heard the freaks, I mean higher grades coming up behind me. I'd ridden 25km and they when had ridden 34km. They passed me at about 45-50km/h. I caught them at the next major intersection (sometimes the red light gods work in my favour) and my speed suddenly jumped up to 35km/h without any effort in the pack. Woohoo I thought, it's still early, I'll ride along with them. 1km later and 1.5km from home I rode over something which didn't sound or feel good, pulled over and slowed only to see my back tyre looking less pumped up. I was able to ride home before it was unridable (new word?)

Basically it was the worst I'd done on these early training ride and I should have stayed in bed. And how's this, I've been recording the results of these early rides to see if I'm improving and I left space in my spread sheet for only 12 rides, this was the 13th ride. I'm not superstitious but the point is there was no space for the results and the results ended up not worth being recorded.

I blame the the triathletes. They only have two speeds, fast and faster. They join us road riders on Thursdays so Thursday is always the harder ride.

Hopefully that's all my bad luck out of the way in one ride and everything will go well on the weekend!

Last edited by tuco on Thu May 17, 2007 10:15 am, edited 1 time in total.

Don't sweat it Tuco, these days happen. Try a gentle spin at flower sniffing pace this arvo, no thoughts of training, HR or direction, just follow the front wheel wherever it takes you. Find something new and enjoyable to experience, then turn around and trundle home.

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